Fourth Estate

I have received the inevitable letter from a body that calls itself Sugar Nutrition UK, from its Nutrition Communication Manager, a Dr Mary Harrington. She is perplexed by statements about the impact of sugar on health that I made in an article on breakfast cereals in the Daily Mail:

“I would therefore be keen to understand the research behind some of the statements… in particular, ‘It is now accepted scientific fact that eating too much sugar increases your chances of suffering from obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and liver problems’.”

Let me introduce you properly to Sugar Nutrition UK. Until this year, it was known as the Sugar Bureau, but it has renamed itself. The old title gave the game away: it is a lobby group for big sugar companies. Change of name notwithstanding, Sugar Nutrition UK continues to be funded by the same UK sugar manufacturers.

Would you trust such vested interests to give you an independent view of sugar and its impact on health? Would you trust it to give you advice on how to prevent children’s teeth rotting, for instance? Probably not, but some more gullible people might. After all, Sugar Nutrition UK now promotes itself as a reliable source of the latest nutrition research on sugars:

“Our job is to provide science-based and up-to-date nutrition information on sugars and health to academics, health professionals, media, public and Government.”

Sugar Nutrition UK doesn’t take kindly to journalists who dare mention to readers that sugar might not be very good for us. After all, it’s on a mission to improve “knowledge and understanding about the contributions of sugar and other carbohydrates to a healthy balanced diet”. Perish the thought that sugar should ever be considered unhealthy. The mission of Sugar Nutrition UK, of course, is reiterate that “no foods should be considered as ‘good or bad’ as all foods play an important role in the diet.” Does this sound familiar?

Sugar Nutrition UK goes further. It argues that not only is sugar not bad for you, you positively need it:

“Carbohydrates (including sugar) help to switch off hunger …… So boosting the level of carbohydrate-rich foods in the diet not only fuels your muscles, but helps to prevent overeating.”

Let’s be clear, Sugar Nutrition UK’s executive summary of sugar science is that sugar can be included ‘as part of a normal, healthy balanced diet’. Next thing we know, Dr Harrington and her colleagues will be presenting it as a health food.

I could invest time and energy in engaging with Dr Harrington. I could quote back to her the recent article in the highly respected journal Nature, entitled ‘The Toxic Truth About Sugar, wherein (independent) scientists conclude that an excess of sugar contributes to 35 million deaths a year worldwide, making us fat, changing our metabolism, raising blood pressure, throwing hormones off balance and harming the liver. Or I could refer her to any number of other pieces of research that testify to the damage sugar does.

But I choose not to waste time in pointless interaction with the PR wing of Big Sugar. It’s more important, I think, to explain how the sugar lobby tries to muzzle journalists.

Let me tell you about my last set-to with the UK sugar lobby. In a distinctly bullish manner, its representative wrote to the editor of a certain publication demanding that I provide scientific evidence to justify every statement I made in an article about the negative impact of sugar on health. He even asked, without any hint of irony, that I back up the statement that sugar can cause tooth decay. All this I duly did, at some length, and in time-consuming detail.

Not satisfied by my response, the sugar lobby representative in question then referred back the matter to my editor. This editor batted the complaint upstairs to the department that deals with legal affairs. It was already well acquainted with Big Sugar complaints as a result of the industry’s habit of stamping on any journalist, editor, or publication that dares to suggest that sugar is anything other than good for us.

Eventually, the sugar lobby gave up. But the Big Sugar strategy here was typical. Its lobbyists are paid to silence critics by keeping them tied up in lengthy, work-intensive exchanges of letters, constantly refusing to accept their very credible sources and demanding that letters ‘correcting’ the ‘misleading’ and outlandish notion that sugar isn’t good for you, be printed.

It’s a strategy that gets results. Knowing how combative and demanding the sugar lobby is, editors and journalists tend to self-censor, by avoiding the subject, or writing about it in a softly-softly, inoffensive way. To do otherwise, would likely mean getting caught up in a protracted, seemingly interminable battle. In other words, journalists soon get the message: ‘Don’t say anything negative about sugar. It’s more bother than it’s worth’.

I am reminded of Jason Reitman’s witty, black comedy, Thank You For Smoking, which starred Aaron Eckhart as a high-earning lobbyist for the tobacco industry. In the film, he is seen in cynical conversation with fellow professional lobbyists (for the alcohol industry and the guns lobby), debating who amongst them has the toughest reason and evidence-denying job. Reitman might well have thrown in a lobbyist for Big Sugar. He, or she, would have fitted right in, justifying  his or her fat salary through sheer effort, if nothing else.

I’m right behind the Meat Crusade, the new campaign to save our high street butchers. They have been haemorrhaging of late, and not because someone’s hand slipped with the cleaver.

There were some 22,000 traditional butchers shops in Britain in the mid-90s but by 2010 there were just over 6,500. A few more will have shut up shop forever by the time you read this.

This culling of skilled butchers is not a natural survival-of-the-fittest phenomenon. The old-style butcher’s shop generally sells much better meat than the supermarket equivalent. Most of the red meat in supermarkets is of mediocre quality and pre-packed in modified atmosphere so it stays ruby red. You’ll struggle to find a properly hung, lovingly aged piece of beef there.

And if you have ever tried to get any sense, or a special cut, or even cooking advice from those people kitted out in white pork pie hats behind the supermarket ‘butcher’s’ counter, you won’t have to be a Sherlock to realise that they have neither the knife skills, training or knowledge one might reasonably expect from any practitioner of this craft.

But for younger generations of queasy Brits who feel faint at any sight of butchering in the raw, the antiseptic supermarket offering, divorced from any thing visceral that says ‘dead animal’, allows them to remain in La-La land about the origins of what’s on their plates.

High street butchers have also lost some ground to farmers’ markets, which appeal to people in search of ethical, local meat from real people. You can find some wonderful meat in farmers’ markets, but health regulations mean that everything has to be pre-packed in plastic, not the best  medium for storing meat.

The farmers’ market customer also has to choose from what the stall sells, and that can be a bit of a lottery. A well-stocked butcher’s shop, on the other hand, responds to the customers needs. If, for instance, you want 300 grams of stewing lamb, you get it. In the farmers’ market, you may have to settle for a 250 gram pre-pack, or spend more than you want and buy two.

And while many producers at farmers’ markets and farm shops are great at rearing animals for meat, some aren’t quite so hot on the links in the meat chain that come after, such as the ancient art of cutting meat with the grain. Relatively few primary producers have the wherewithal to mature meat in the time-honoured way. So, however good they are, farmers’ markets stalls most certainly don’t make craft butchers redundant.

I pick up quite a bit of minced meat and chicken at the farmers’ market, but for beef and lamb, it’s off to my favourite high street butcher. He knows where his meat comes from and it is always immaculately butchered and properly hung. I can also rely on him for more economical cuts, such as oxtail, flank mutton, feather blade and shin. If I come in with a recipe that requires a special cut, and maybe some tricky boning, he isn’t fazed and neither are any members of his staff. On that front, there are six permanently employed, properly remunerated butchers, plus a cashier. It’s a small job creation scheme in itself. I doubt that the supermarket across the road is as well staffed, even though it’s ten times the size.

We need to cherish the excellent traditional butchers who have kept going valiantly in the teeth of the supermarket takeover of our food chain. As the Meat Crusade puts it, if one in 10 of us returned to our local butcher that would be make a real difference. And if one in five of us did so, even once a week, it could start a revolution.

First published on Friday 10th February on http://www.joannablythmanwriting.com

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Orange Prize-winning novel is being adapted into a screenplay by Nigerian playwright Biyi Bandele, who famously adapted Chinua Achebe’s ‘Things Fall Apart’ for the London stage.

Screen Daily and IdieWire report that financing for the film is being provided by British producers Andrea Calderwood (“The Last King of Scotland,” “Generation Kill”) and Gail Egan (“Happy-Go-Lucky,” “The Constant Gardener”) alongside Nigerian private funding and The British Film Institute (BFI).

If reports are true then the production has lined up an A-List cast to tell Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche’s Orange Prize-winning story of the Biafran war.

Dominic Cooper is the star of recent hits such as the Oscar-nominated ‘An Education’ in which he starred alongside Carey Mulligan; ‘The Duchess’ in which he played the object of Kiera Knighley’s affections; and most recently ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’.

Thandie Newton is the BAFTA-winning actress famous for her roles in ‘Crash’, ‘Beloved’ and ‘The Pursuit of Happyness’. She has recently read the audiobook for ‘Go The F*** to Sleep’ by Adam Mansbach for Canongate.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is the BAFTA-winning and Golden Globe-nominated star of stage and screen, best known for his 2008 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor-winning  performance in Othello.

Filming is set to begin in March, so my guess is that we will see this released in late 2013 straight into the ‘Oscar-corridor’ in preparation for awards season in early 2014.

Exciting news!  Dan Lepard’s Short And Sweet has been shortlisted in the Food category of the 2011 Andre Simon Food & Drink Book Awards.

The shortlisted books for the 2011 prize in the food category are:

Bocca – Jacob Kenedy published by Bloomsbury

Couture Chocolate – William Curley published by Jacqui Small

Scottish Seafood – Catherine Brown published by Birlinn

Short and Sweet – Dan Lepard published by Fourth Estate

Tasting India – Christine Mansfield published by Octopus Books

The Good Cook – Simon Hopkinson published by Ebury Press

Tripe – Marjorie Houlihan published by Prospect Books

The shortlisted books for the 2011 prize in the drink category are:

Authentic Wines – Jamie Goode and Sam Harrop MW published by University of California Press

In Search of Pinot Noir – Benjamin Lewin published by Vendange Press

Oxford Companion to Beer – Garrett Oliver published by Oxford University Press

The Finest Wines of Rioja and Northwest Spain – Jesús Barquín, Luis Gutiérrez and Victor de las Serna published by Aurum Press 

The winner of the award will be announced at an awards ceremony to take place on 15 March at the Goring Hotel in London at 6.30pm.

Last night (Monday 30th January), Jeremy Paxman was joined by Egyptian internet activist Wael Ghonim, author of Revolution 2.0.

Asking Wael what he thought the catalyst for revolution in Egypt one year ago was, Wael spoke about the role of the internet in exposing the lies told to the people by dictators.

You can no longer use state media, propaganda and abuse to force people to believe this is the best they can achieve. Access to the truth is becoming easier and easier for new generations of citizens.

To watch the interview in full go to BBC iPlayer. Wael is Jeremy’s last guest at 41m 20sec.